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I’m not great at small talk. I sometimes have a hard time keeping a conversation going. I sometimes ask too little. And I sometimes appear to be disinterested (even when I’m not). It’s a problem and I am working on it. But not everyone would characterize it as problematic …

Throughout probably all of my adult life I’ve been surrounded by people – mostly male – who “just don’t do small talk”. The weather, people’s next holiday trip, the exchange of pleasantries were all thought to be “what those normal people do” implying that oneself wasn’t normal but different (implying better).

It would be easy to just blame a few of my life choices1. Maybe it’s just one of these things, a trope a certain part of culture clings to in order to define one’s own identity as a group. But I think there’s more to it.

The rejection of “pleasantries” as a social norm carries with it a rejection of “the system”, an adolescent vibe of punkishness. In this case tightly coupled with the idea that one’s own thoughts are all very deep and important, way too important to be watered down by “pointless” questions about a person’s travel or last meal. Many of us have probably been there at some point. Some have outgrown it. Assigning so much value to one’s own thoughts and the implicit devaluation of other people – at least of those people who might not want to start a discussion of international copyright legislation or whatever your shtick is every.fucking.time – create a very strange and somewhat disturbing system of social similarity. I’ve seen that a lot and being at those kind of events is about as disturbing as attending a conservative party rally: You kind of understand why people are there but it just goes against everything that makes life less of an empty, less dreadful void. But I digress.

What I just outlined is a very superficial and obvious observation. But there are actually two things about the vocal rejection of small talk that I keep thinking about whenever I see another one of those statements that are possibly even connected. The first is the aspect of a lack of understanding of communication and its diverse functions: Language is reduced to a mere carrier of factual information. As if language was just about what is said. Language is more that whatever the dictionary says the words spoken actually mean. Language is what ties us together, it’s a social conduit establishing trust and indirectly communicating and sometimes even “debating” the ways the participants of a conversation place themselves and each other into the world and in relation to each other. To say it less abstract: People don’t talk about the weather because they don’t have anything interesting to say but as a way to establish shared experiences, to connect to people and their life in a way that doesn’t touch anything that might be triggering or unpleasant. Small talk in that understanding can be a very good upgrade to the handshake.

Devaluation of small talk makes important parts of human life invisible and it can’t be an accident that it mostly concerns itself with things western societies often assign to be “female”. This gets uncomfortable quickly when you hear people building supposedly social software arguing like this. And then you realize why so many social pieces of software fell so bad: It’s makers don’t understand social … anything.

Not doing small talk also is often seen as a way to gain meaning in one’s life. Minimal living, throw out everything from your apartment that wouldn’t be seen in an Apple commercial and don’t “waste” words with trivialities. Live life to the artisan-made Pepsi Max replacement. There probably is an app for that. But just as many other minimal lifestyle proposals this one drips with privilege.

Recently Mark Zuckerberg posted a photo of his wardrobe, asking what to wear to work2: His wardrobe is just identical copies of the same hoodie and shirt. The Steve Jobs comparisons instantly popped up everywhere with people explaining how efficient wearing the same clothes every day is when you want people to just listen to what you say and not look at what you wear.

Great advice. Let’s give everyone 1 billion dollars so they can afford to run around however they want. But when you need other people, need them to maybe give you a loan, need them to hire you, to pay you, to serve you without hassling you that Freedom(tm) to dress that way goes away fast. Sure it sound cute but it’s also a bullshit fairy tale.

The same goes for small talk: Explicitly rejecting to be part of that dance might feel very punk but in the end it’s just the freedom of people very rich, connected and established or of those who don’t need others for other reason.

Small talk is named deceivingly. It’s neither small nor is it really about what people talk about. It’s social glue and often a way to connect. It’s neither below anyone nor trivial. It’s quite the art form actually: Some people have mastered it to a degree that allows them to give you the feeling of being a friend and king with less that 20 words. Sadly even after writing way more than 20 words about it I still suck at small talk.